Naxos Blog

2007 marks the 20^th anniversary of Naxos, the world’s leading independent classical music label and a rare music industry success story.  Founded by Klaus Heymann in 1987, Naxos has grown from a small Hong Kong-based budget label to the undisputed industry leader in the quantity of new releases (238 albums recorded in 29 countries around the world in 2006 alone), depth and breadth of repertoire, music education, digital distribution, and physical distribution of independent CD and DVD labels.       

Naxos’s first-ever catalog, published in early 1988, contained a mere 61 titles; today, Naxos offers 5,500 albums—and adds 15-20 each month—featuring internationally-acclaimed musicians, including conductors Marin Alsop, Leonard Slatkin, and José Serebrier; orchestras such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and the Baltimore Symphony; and chamber groups such as the Corigliano Quartet, Fine Arts Quartet, and Pacifica Quartet.  

The huge range of repertoire and strong international distribution network have made Naxos “a pioneering force in an otherwise risk-averse industry” (Elizabeth Blair of National Public Radio).  All-time sales have exceeded 100 million units—7 million in 2006 alone.  The Naxos recording of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons has sold more than 1 million copies, one of only 25 classical titles to reach that total.  Such series as American Classics and Film Music Classics, to name but two of Naxos’s numerous collections, are brisk sellers.  

Naxos, consistently praised by critics and listeners alike, was named the Gramophone/Classic FM Label of the Year in 2005.  In 2006, Naxos’s recording of William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and Experience earned three GRAMMY Awards.  The label’s albums have won over 130 Editor’s Choice distinctions from the British music magazine Gramophone and are consistently on American music critics’ annual “best of” lists.  

Over its first two decades Naxos has diversified with a number of sister labels. These include Naxos AudioBooks, Naxos Educational, and, most recently, Naxos Books, which combines authoritative biographies and other titles with supplementary CD and internet-based listening.  

AMERICAN PERFORMERS, AMERICAN CLASSICS 

Naxos is proud to be returning two of the top-tier orchestras in the United States—the Baltimore Symphony and the Detroit Symphony—to the recording world in 2008.    The Baltimore Symphony will record Antonin Dvořák’s Symphonies Nos. 5 through 9 with new Music Director Marin Alsop.  Recording sessions have already begun and will be completed by March 2008.  The Detroit Symphony will contribute two recordings toNaxos’s American Classics series: Hannibal Lokumbé’s Dear Mrs. Parks and an album of music by Michael Daugherty, including his Violin Concerto and MotorCity Triptych. Other upcoming featured releases of the American Classics series—an ambitious 200-album (and growing) survey of American music from the 18th Century to the present—include John Corigliano’s A Dylan Thomas Trilogy with Leonard Slatkin and the Nashville Symphony and the Pacifica Quartet’s complete cycle of Elliott Carter’s String Quartets.   

NAXOS DIGITAL: INNOVATION FROM AN “INDUSTRY LEADER”  

Naxos is poised to build on its success as an “industry leader” (Los Angeles Times) in the field of digital music, a position earned through such groundbreaking services as the Naxos Music Library (www.naxosmusiclibrary.com), which offers streaming service to 1,127 institutional subscribers in 30 countries and territories worldwide, and Naxos Web Radio (www.NaxosRadio.com).  Visitors to Naxos.com can register to hear all Naxos CDs online in FM quality (20K) or can register to hear samples of all tracks for free.   

Naxos has also begun to pioneer direct-to-consumer online distribution with Classicsonline (www.classicsonline.com), a new dedicated classical music download site with a comprehensive collection of Naxos recordings and tracks from other labels such as BIS, Chandos, Collegium, and Coro.  All downloads are Digital Rights Management-free in MP3 format at 192 Kilobits per second; CD covers and liner notes are available for downloading free of charge.  Unlike other download sites, Classicsonline features classical music-friendly, customized, flexible search functions that allow consumers to find easily what they’re looking for.  In addition to classical music, the service also offers a wide range of jazz, world music, folk, and contemporary instrumental music.     

Here in the US, Naxos of America has just opened its own online boutique CD and DVD store, NaxosDirect (www.naxosdirect.com), with Naxos’s 5,500 titles and DVDs and CDs from the other labels.  Since 2005, Naxos of America’s Raymond Bisha has hosted the Naxos Classical Music Spotlight podcast series. 

In October 2005, eMusic and Naxos of America announced that the digital download store eMusic would offer Naxos’s entire catalog; since then, Naxos has become one of eMusic’s top-selling labels.  Naxos of America also recently completed a deal to put the entire Naxos catalogue of 100,000 tracks up on British-based social networking site Last.FM.    

For more information on Naxos, please contact Mark Berry at 212-681-4408 or mberry [at] naxosusa [dot] com.